Cherry blossoms
by Mr or Ms Tanuki
Summary: AU In a world where the events of October 10th happened three years before canon, where a war between Kumo and Konoha happened after the attempted kidnapping of Hyuuga Hinata, Uzumaki Naruto wakes up in a hospital. He hasn't aged for two years, and he has no idea of how he did that. So he struggles to remember his past as he hides behind a mask of normalcy.
1. Prologue 1

**This is AU, and this is also a prologue. Naruto currently was born three years before than he actually was in canon. There was a war between Konoha and Kumo from when he was 7-10. Nobody knows what happened to the 9 tails, most assume that the Yondaime took the Nine tails down with him. And enjoy!**

9 years before Chapter One:

* * *

The thing is when they tried to kidnap the Hyuuga girl, Naruto was eating ramen.

He had just finished a mission, forced himself to shower and now he was hungry. So naturally to celebrate the end of the mission he took himself out for ramen. Everybody else on his team was probably already in bed, but he just went out for ramen anyways. Even though his muscles screamed on the way, he went for ramen.

It was a ritual he did every time he got back from a long mission. Even though it was a fairly straightforward C-rank, and somehow it managed to turn into a exhausting C-rank that required back-up, he went out for ramen.

As he chewed the lovely noodles, he absently noticed his scars on his wrists. Naruto pulled the sleeves of his jacket over them so he wouldn't see them. Then he went back to chewing and slurping his meal.

* * *

The emergency call for arms about a week later had him waking up, trying to dress in his clothes and eat breakfast at the same time. Naruto was only genin, but he was summoned, probably because he worked in the medic department sometimes. When you worked in the medic department, they usually ended up passing you through teams, whenever an empty spot was available so that the team would at least have a medic.

Naruto waited for his orders. Even though he was only 7 and looked like he was 5 or 6, he knew what to do. He was a shinobi. What to do had been drilled repeatedly into his head over the short period of time he became one.

There was shouting as he went into the blank bare room waiting for his orders. Arguing, gambling, debating. It was a noisy slightly crowded room that he was uncomfortable in. He didn't see anyone he was particularly friendly with, just a few he knew.

Whispers. Everyone was talking about the attempted kidnapping of the Hyuuga girl. Apparently the heiress was three years younger than him and quiet. The type of girl who should've been born to a civilian family.

"Naruto Uzumaki!"  
He got up and went to receive his orders, noticing that he was the only one called. Strange, but maybe not too strange, after all he was only a genin.

"Uzumaki Naruto."

The Sandaime Hokage had seen many things in his life. And the boy standing in front of him wouldn't be exceptional in anyway on the outside to a total complete stranger, except for his age and the blank look on his face as if confused.

Uzumaki Naruto was exceptional in many ways. He was 7 and yet a genin, his kekkai genkai was as powerful as his mother's was before she died.

And now he was standing in front of the Sandaime waiting for his orders. The Sandaime could see the resemblance to another young blond shinobi with spiky hair. He shook his head and returned to giving the genin his order

* * *

Blood. .

It was dripping down his hands. Wait, was he breathing. Oh, now he was. The kunai in his hand was broken and unusable but he put it into one of his pockets anyways.

"Don't 't leave. Don't leave me!Please!"

Tears dripped down his cheeks. He rubbed them away. He forced his chakra into her wounds.

"Damn it."

He was swearing. Things that his sensei would have disapproved of. He didn't care. Naruto needed her to live.

"Heal! Come on heal!"

He was yelling at the wound now. It wouldn't do anything but give him a sore throat but he did it anyways.

"Naruto...don't waste your...chakra." She managed to rasp.

Naruto ignored what she said and continued trying to heal her.

* * *

It was raining. He placed the flowers down at the tomb. It was a thing that he did quite often.

No matter what, rain or shine he took her favourite flowers to her tomb.

And he could imagine her smiling.

Without blood.

Without scars or wounds.

Surrounded by a halo of light.

* * *

Breathe. In. Out. In. Out.

He was hacking blood. Itachi certainly had good aim.

He pressed the light seal on his wrist and waited for the darkness. It wasn't the end. Naruto knew that. But it was a just a break from consciousness.

Screaming was coming from the rest of the houses, but he blackness had already claimed him.

* * *

7 years before Chapter 1:

* * *

His mindscape was covered in mirrors and glass. Except for the occasional blooming cherry blossom tree.

He didn't like to look at himself in the mirrors.

Why should he?

Pain.

Light?

Wait...light?

Light, blinding white light shone into his eyes. Naruto could feel himself open his eyes. He knew this sensation, the feeling of being knocked out.

"How long was I out." He asked when he finally managed to speak.

The medic-nin attending to him glanced at each other, warily and unsure of how to tell

him.

"How should I put this? You were in a coma for a year..."Began the first medic nin.

"So..." He murmured to that, the implications of the fact clear in his head.

"The thing is, you haven't changed. By changed I mean aged. You are still the same age you were when you went into the coma."

Naruto eyes were wide with what the medic nin had said.

* * *

"I'm sorry."

To a passer-by, it would've looked very stupid. A young boy apologizing to a tombstone underneath a rain of cherry blossom petals.

It made perfect sense to Naruto and the girl who was buried six feet under.

And they were fine with that.

* * *

"Live. Please, live." He whispered.

Naruto's wish was granted.

His sensei lived.

In the hospital.

In a coma.

* * *

"In the end, we're just tools to be used." He muttered to the air

* * *

6 years before Chapter One:

* * *

The Raiton jutsu hurt like hell.

Naruto was lucky to be alive, he thought he was a goner for a second. His teammate was panicking because he was having problems with breathing. Naruto already knew he was healing. He could feel it.

"Sorry..." He told his teammate.

His teammate looked at him oddly, "What do you mean?"

"For being such a bother."

"You're not a bother Naruto, besides sensei told me to look after you, we're the last remains of our original genin team."

Naruto realised that was true. She and sensei were gone. Naruto and his teammates were all alone in the big dark world.

Naruto wanted to cry but he didn't. He was a shinobi now and shinobi couldn't cry.

No matter what.

* * *

Panting he stopped and checked his shoulder strap. The stolen scroll was still there. Good. The had it, and the mission from hell was almost done.

"Shiro where are..." and then saw the corpse with three kunais beside him. It wasn't the smell or the sight of it that sickened him, but himself. Uzumaki Naruto had become so used to corpses that they didn't sicken him anymore.

_What have I become?_

"

* * *

Hi! My name is Akahana Yuki! I'm your new teammate!" The smiling girl in front of him reminded him of her. She was happy, optimistic.

A new sun entered Uzumaki Naruto's life that day.

* * *

5 years before Chapter One:

* * *

"Eat Naruto! Eat! Come on, just eat it already!"

He raised an eyebrow at her, "Why should I?" Naruto asked.

"Because."

"Why?"

"Just because."

And he laughed, and she laughed too. The rest of their team was already laughing.

* * *

"We are here today for the funeral of..."

Naruto's hair was dripping, full of rain. In the end he couldn't save him. He was useless.

Shinobi didn't cry. It was only the rain dripping down his face.

Just the rain.

Not tears.

Not tears.

Denial isn't a river in Egypt.

* * *

4 years before Chapter One:

His hair was an interesting thing.

When he was younger, it had been full of life. As more and more of his friends got injured and died, it started to slightly droop. It began to die and lose its happiness.

Now it didn't have a spark of life anymore.

Not anymore.

He still smiled. But he realised one day it was becoming fake.

* * *

"No...not again!"

"Naruto...just do it."

"But..."

"Please."

"Alright."

He activated the seal, it was burning, burning...

Itachi had betrayed him again.

He guessed that this time, it wouldn't be like before.

He didn't care so much anymore.

* * *

3 years before Chapter One:

* * *

The room was empty except for a bed, some machines and a boy who was 12 looking like he was asleep on the bed.

The boy was in a coma.

That was obvious.

He hadn't aged.

Not since he went into it.

* * *

2 years before Chapter One:

Nothing had changed.

Nothing.

Nobody except for a few people visited the boy because most of the boy's precious people were dead or unable to.

* * *

1 year before Chapter One:

* * *

Naruto Uzumaki had woken up. He didn't remember much of his life. He remembered jutsu, skills and various bits of useless ancient history. But his past he didn't remember.

Apparently he had a kekkai genkai but he didn't remember how to use it.

So they sent him off to the Academy.

Uzumaki Naruto found the Academy boring but he didn't want to stand out. Standing out was a thing he didn't want to do. He knew that. It was something he faintly remembered.

So he stayed invisible.

**Note July 30, 2012: I didn't like having my prologues like they were before, so i ended up changing this. Sorry.**

**Jan 20, 2013: Shit, just discovered instead of 9, I put 6 at the top. Sorry for confusing people...heh, heh...*sweatdrop* Slightly edited format too**


	2. Chapter 1

**Hello ^^. Only about say 6 people really read this in my mind so yeah. Deadline for Chapter 2: July 31, wow ,the stuff below is around 2000 words. Anyways, I had already finished writing this and then went : "Oh yeah, I really need to right a prologue." Enjoy (please review)**

The darkness always gave him goose bumps on his arm. He didn't know why. It was just silly to be paranoid in your own mindscape but somehow the darkness made him like that. The number of times he entered his own mindscape he could count with one hand. He knew that once he just a bit further, he would enter the mirror part of his mind. This somehow made him feel safe, even though he got lost sometimes wandering that part.

Naruto kept on walking. Somewhere in his mind was Kurama, and he needed to see him. He didn't know how long it would take, but sooner or later he would find Kurama.

But he didn't.

Damn it, it was his mindscape after all, so why couldn't he find Kurama?

He gave up the hopeless search. Naruto had spent what seemed like hours searching for Kurama, and he knew that when Kurama didn't want to see him, he couldn't find him. So Naruto played rock-paper-scissors with himself in his mind.

* * *

The alarm clock woke Naruto up, beeping like crazy. He wanted to punch the alarm clock, but it cost money, and money was something he didn't have a lot of. The bowls of instant ramen were almost out and he knew he would soon have to restock. So, sighing he poured the burning hot water into the bowl of ramen and waited for the noodles to be soft. Today was the day they began missions.

Well, at least he would get some more money for food from the money from missions now that he was a genin. He needed that money really bad right now too. With thoughts of how to pay the bills on his mind, he ate his ramen, watered his plants and walked out the door to meet the rest of Team 7.

Sakura and Sasuke were already at the bridge, waiting for their sensei. They didn't really bother noticing him, deeming him beneath their attention for because he was the class nobody, always somewhere in the middle and thus unimportant. His performance with the bells yesterday was imprinted in their mind. If Naruto hadn't had an ice cold grip over his face, he would've smiled, because it had all gone to plan.

Now, he had to wait for their already very late sensei.

* * *

The D ranks were rather easy. Well it was easy when you had kage bunshin to help and do them, so what would've been a hour long mission turned into a 15 minute mission.

Which was good since then Naruto could worry less about the small yet growing amount in his bank account. Instead he had to suppress the urge to strangle, poison, attack with a kunai, or anything that would actually kill his teammates.

Sasuke he could stand, as long as the arrogant, brooding boy kept to himself and did his work. Sakura was the one he really had to try not to strangle. She annoyed him.

A lot.

Naruto always had to consciously put up an effort to at least tolerate Sakura, so that his disgust wouldn't show. So Naruto pretended to be friendly to her, smiling with closed eyes towards her so she couldn't see anything in her eyes. Honestly, he was anxious to get out of Team 7. Somehow he felt a little deja vu at the statement. He brushed it off as his imagination.

Oh how wrong he was.

* * *

He gritted his teeth. The annoying drunkard he had gotten as his client, well he wasn't sure if Sakura was even more annoying or that drunkard. Tazuna, as he called himself he didn't trust. Somehow Naruto had always had some kind of hesitation to trust. Which wasn't too bad because, living as a shinobi, trust was always short and usually absent. Naruto was forcing himself to behave in front of Tazuna, after all, money was money.

And money was short currently.

So he forced himself to think of things that wouldn't kill Tazuna. Which wasn't working so well because he was thinking of plants. And the plants Naruto liked the best were the poisonous ones. He needed the pay from the C rank for his new experiment, and he would get that pay, no matter how annoying Tazuna was.

The pair of missing nin that had attacked them had confirmed more than one thing. But it had almost made him take serious action. Naruto was becoming slightly paranoid now. Nobody really had to know about the fact that he would talk with the Kurama, or he liked plants. Or maybe it was that he preferred to be thought as the class nobody so that no one would think him a threat. Then he was safer from the rest of the world. The poison was nothing, he didn't know why he bled it out. It was just simply an instinct, an urge.

He glanced at something. Honestly somehow he managed to sense something moving, he wasn't sure how. Hesitantly, he threw one of his cheaper kunais at the thing, unsure what it exactly was. Kakashi-sensei noticed and Naruto warily looked at Kakashi through the corner of his eyes looking for any sign of disapproval at his actions.

Naruto heard the dull thud of kunai meeting flesh. He looked at the dead rabbit, something was …wrong. Naruto could hear the fangirl saying something that went along the lines of "Don't hurt innocent little bunnies" or something like that, he wasn't sure. What was wrong? Something was. He sensed it, it was one of those almost forgotten memories, he only felt a feeling of forgetting something.

White. White. Wait...White!

It was white.

Yet it wasn't the right season for rabbits to be white.

Then Kakashi yelled duck and Naruto ducked for his life.

* * *

Something was off about the hunter-nin. He wasn't sure. He couldn't really tell. Another almost forgotten memory, a feeling of something wrong. Naruto really hated memories he knew he had almost completely forgotten, they were always tantalizingly there, just under his nose, but he just couldn't get it.

Naruto forced himself to smile just a bit harder, after all it wouldn't do to let his teammates see his frustration. The rest of Team 7 needed to be in the complete dark about him, they didn't need to know what he was thinking about or if he was even thinking.

Even though Team 7 wasn't clearly his enemy, maybe sometimes in the future they would get into his way. If that happened, he preferred to have an ace in the hole, because it never hurt to have one, or two.

* * *

The seal was pounding on his skin. Pounding. He clenched his teeth. Clench. Unclench. Clench.

He had done something to upset the seal. Naruto wasn't sure what. All he knew was that he did. The hand seals he had almost done. A memory.

Some memory. Another almost burned out memory, with only ashes left to remember that he had forgotten.

He sighed, and went back to sleep on a borrowed futon in Tazuna's guest room.

* * *

Naruto was helping Tsunami out in the kitchen after training. The pair were chopping vegetables, Tsunami being surprisingly fast at it. There was an empty silence that made Naruto feel slightly awkward.

"Umm...have you ever seen ninja like us before?"As soon as the question left his mouth, he wanted to bang his head on the counter for how idiotic it sounded.

Tsunami turned and faced him, "You mean ninja from the Leaf? Yes, during the war Konoha had with Kumo."

"Konoha had a war with Kumo?" That was faintly familiar. Somehow in his mind it lit a lantern.

"Yes, You didn't know?" There was a faint note of incredulity in the question. Which made perfect sense as it was _his_ village at war with another and he should've probably known.

"No..." Naruto quietly murmured to himself and then raised his voice, "But can you tell me Tsunami-san? I'm afraid my memory was blurred in an accident a while ago, so that I have problems with recalling many parts of my life."

What he said wasn't completely a lie, his memory was gone in an accident, and he truly did have problems remembering anything. He just wasn't telling her everything. Which he didn't need to.

"Well...what I know is that there was some kind of incident that somehow triggered the war, about 6 years ago. It ended 2 years ago, a week after there was a huge battle. Ninja from both sides would sometimes take routes through Wave since we were a small and neutral nation. Anyways from what I know Konoha won the war."

Naruto nodded his head at the information, "Thank you for telling me this Tsunami-san."

"Oh, it's nothing!" Tsunami smiled at the boy and went back to chopping vegetables while Naruto thought about what she had just told him.

He could remember blood faintly in a dream that he once had. Naruto had woken up sweating, but barely remembering what the dream had been about.

Still, Kakashi-sensei had never mentioned it. Naruto had never heard about it during the year he had been in the Academy.

What was going on?

The Hokage knew he had lost his memory, but for that many people to know...

The wary glances that Kakashi-sensei sometimes threw at Naruto, Sasuke watching Naruto when he thought Naruto wasn't looking. Naruto wasn't a total idiot. Far from it, so it didn't took long for him to realise that he were watching him for something. For some kind of...reaction?

Which made the undeniable feeling of forgetting something even stronger. What had he known that made a jounin and another member on his team watch him? Had he done something wrong? Did they suspect he had remembered blurs and faint edges of his past.

Naruto didn't know.

He needed to know though, and Uzumaki Naruto knew that knowledge is power.

That was how he survived.

* * *

He couldn't sleep in the small guest room that he shared his Sasuke. Most nights, Naruto had difficulty sleeping, even in his tiny apartment. They called people like him insomniacs.

Well, at least they spared him the problem of thinking about what to call himself.

As he crept down the stairs he checked if Kurama was over whatever Naruto had done. Unfortunately, Kurama still wasn't responding to his thoughts. Somehow Naruto had unknowingly pissed Kurama off, something that he didn't exactly like. Sure, he got a break from Kurama's snarky comments and self absorbed manner, but still Kurama occasionally offered useful advice.

Which was something he needed.

Whatever Naruto had done, he hoped he would find some kind of peace offering that would make Kurama happy so that Kurama would reply again sometime soon. Hopefully.

Quietly pushing the door open, he went towards the direction of the woods, walking in the gleam of the moon. Nobody noticed him, a skill he was proud of. It was distinctly cooler outside than inside Tazuna's house, but he didn't mind. Being outside gave him a break from the feeling of being trapped in the slightly small interiors of the house.

Sometime after a period of walking the shadows of the trees, he became tired. It was late after all, and the paranoia had tired him. It was so calm and peaceful, and he heard soft small animal noises. No missing nin, no brooders, no pink haired teammate who shouts too loud. Just him in the woods.

Naruto did one last act of paranoia: climbing up a tree and using Kakuremino no Jutsu on his trench coat. Then he snuggled into the leaves and closed his eyes.

For the first time in a long time, he slept and dreamt of nothing.

Pure nothing.

Just black.

Which suited Uzumaki Naruto just fine.

44


	3. Chapter 2

**This is un-betad and obviously very amateur. Don't expect much. If you can beta, thank you. I'm sorry if you don't like this, can you tell me where I can fix it in a review and I'll try better next chapter to fix those mistakes. I think I passed my deadline. **

**Sorry (no I'm not being sarcastic, I really do mean it).**

He opened his eyes, someone was close. A person dressed in a pink kimono. The person in question had long black hair, pale skin and their body looked like a flat chested girl's. Yet, when the person in question turned, Naruto saw that the person had a adam's apple, which made him a boy. Maybe the person was a hermaphrodite...

A boy who was around Naruto's own age, give or take a few years. He sighed as he realised the cross-dresser had detected him somehow and and Naruto was forced to pretend he had just woken up. He fake yawned and stretched, then pretended to be shocked as he saw the boy.

"What are you doing out so early?" He asked, slightly mumbling the words while rubbing his eyes as if he had just woken up.

"Oh, what are you doing out here?" The male replied and then tapped Naruto's forehead protector and then pretended to be amazed by the fact Naruto happened to be a shinobi.

_Great, a shinobi who obviously is playing with me like a cat does with a mouse it 't panic, he probably will see it. He's good enough at infiltration, but obviously doesn't specialize in it. _Because, Naruto knew his own tricks well enough not to be fooled by them. Especially not from somebody who didn't specialize in it.

Naruto let his face turn into what Sakura called his Cheshire Cat grin: eyes closed in half crescents and mouth smiling a big grin. Apparently he half of the time he infuriated her with that smile, and the other half of the time he just looked happy to her. However Naruto intended to somehow make the atmosphere more relaxed so he could check out something odd about the shinobi. Something about the shinobi made him think he had seen the ninja before.

"I'm picking plants." The shinobi smiled at him to appear harmless, "do you mind helping?"

Naruto knew he had a perfect excuse now to figure out more about this mystery shinobi and the mystery shinobi now had a perfect excuse to know more about him. A stalemate. So, Naruto knew that the best way to guarantee an advantage over the mystery ninja was to bluff and give bad information.

_Wait, how did he even know that?_ He didn't know. Naruto's best guess was that it was an experience from his forgotten past.

And so, Naruto found himself picking plants with medicinal properties, sometimes slipping in the odd plant that looked slightly like what he was supposed to pick, so that Haku wouldn't be suspicious of his act. After all, Haku didn't need to know how good he was with plants.

The odd question or two bought Naruto more time to observe the mystery in front of him.

Naruto was _sure_ he had seen the shinobi somewhere. He observed the body, the way the shinobi moved and reacted and then tried to match the voice to a memory.

_Wait, it couldn't be..._

So this was Zabuza's accomplice, the mysterious fake hunter nin that took Zabuza's body away. Honestly, Naruto shouldn't have been surprised, the tiny clues should have alerted him earlier. _Should have._ Oh Kami, he was such an idiot.

"Naruto-kun do you have any people that are precious to you?"

The question startled him slightly, he wasn't expecting something so...personal. Honestly what Naruto was expecting was more along the lines of senbon in his neck, and his corpse among the grass. Then again, if Naruto had let his true views of the world show, he would've been called depressingly pessimistic. Naruto preferred to think himself as a realist.

_What should he say?_ If he lied and stayed in character, the hunter nin could use that against him, because in all honesty, if he lied he would be forced to use that lie as it was with his character of the Naruto Team 7 thought they knew. If he told the truth and said, "I don't know." The hunter nin probably wouldn't be so friendly with him. So, mentally sighing, he decided to do what he usually did: twist the truth.

"People who are precious to me...hmmm...I've never actually thought about that...See...I'm an orphan, and when I was younger I moved out of the orphanage to study in the Ninja Academy...I guess my precious people are my friends..." He pretended to muse and think over what the fake hunter nin had asked him.

"Oh, by the way what's your name?" He called after the fake hunter nin after they had finished picking plants.

"Haku."

"Thank you Haku-kun!"

The fake hunter nin a.k.a. Haku, was staring at Naruto (which Naruto found sort of creepy). Haku was staring at Naruto out of the fact Naruto knew he was a boy. Something which never happened to Haku when he met people.

Ever. And it just happened now.

But Naruto had disappeared too fast for Haku to question him. Sighing, Haku left the clearing.

* * *

"Where were you Naruto?" Sakura shouted at him, " You should've been helping guard Tazuna! I had to guard him for you baka!"

Why did he even bother passing the test Kakashi-sensei had given them? Forcing himself to smile and look embarrassed he answered, "Um...Well...I couldn't sleep last night and went out for a walk. But, I fell asleep during that walk."

Forcing himself to look slightly panicked as Sakura got madder and then he had himself say, "Sorry about that Sakura. Really. I won't do that ever again."

He cautiously watched Sakura deflate from boiling mad to slightly annoyed. As she walked away muttering, he sighed in relief that she hadn't stayed. If she had stayed he didn't know what he would have done. He could've done something that he would've regret. He could've let the mask slip just a little bit.

Great, he had the worst possible teammate for him.

Lucky him.

* * *

Sunlight was streaming into his face when he woke up. He rubbed his eyes and went to the bathroom to brush his teeth. Letting the cold water wash his face, he went downstairs for breakfast. But only Tsunami was there. The remains of what was breakfast were on the table and Naruto realised he had woken up late. So he shoved food into his mouth, chewing a bit of it and swallowed, and ran for the bridge.

Naruto panted when he finally reached the bored figure of Sasuke. Sasuke just looked boredly down at Naruto, and went back to guarding Tazuna. Naruto sighed, and resigned himself for the long and boring task of guarding with Team 7.

Somehow the task seemed familiar.

His lungs slightly ached as he ran at top speed towards Tazuna's house. Naruto knew he was a blur right then because he put chakra into his legs as he ran, and soon overhead the thugs Gatou had apparently hired. He could hear Tsunami threatening to bite her tongue off, and Inari's crying. If it wasn't just a bad idea to go into battle with your fingers crossed, Naruto would have done it. Naruto had a pretty good idea the thugs didn't realise he was there, and he was depending on that.

Uzumaki Naruto had the luck of the devil, or maybe it was that he was just very good at hiding in the shadows. The thugs didn't realise he was there.

And that was there unlucky mistake.

A few minutes later, there were two corpses with their throats slit on Tazuna's front yard. The sight of the bodies made Tsunami cover Inari's eyes so that he couldn't see them.

"Thank you..."Tsunami softly said, but Naruto was already running away.

That was something he was good at.

* * *

His heart was thumping. Ba-dump. Ba-dump. Ba-dump.

He could hear it. Kami, what was wrong with him? He wasn't even there yet. Naruto stopped for a second and breathed. He waited for his heart to calm down. He could hear himself breathing, which wasn't good.

Naruto was paranoid, and his paranoia had convinced him that everybody could hear his thumping heart and his breathing.

It seemed like forever, but eventually his heart went back to its normal tempo. Then Naruto got up and ran like hell towards his team.

* * *

When he finally got there, it didn't look too good. Kakashi and Zabuza were at some kind of a stalemate, each having an equal amount of wounds while Sasuke didn't look to be doing so well with Haku. Naruto knew that if he helped Kakashi, he could be more of a liability than an advantage so he chose to help Sasuke.

Meanwhile, Sakura watched with wide eyes, kunai in hand, trembling.

* * *

Uchiha Sasuke had been called a prodigy. Actually he still was. Yet he wasn't doing so well against the fake hunter nin.

Naruto was inside the area covered by the mirrors. He had used Kakuremino no Jutsu to hide himself from the duo.

He tapped his chin thoughtfully as he saw the mirrors were made out of ice. Well, apparently Haku had a kekkei genkai. watch for a while to see more of Haku's weaknesses? Well, Sasuke wasn't doing _too_ bad so, why not?

Naruto sighed, if Sasuke kept on going on at this rate, he would be forced to assist Sasuke against the fake hunter nin. Naruto preferred to sit on the sidelines and watch, which he was doing. Even without him acting as the class nobody, Naruto was unsure about himself defeating Haku. He knew jutsu that could penetrate the mirrors, but he wasn't sure. And Haku had a kekkei genkai he knew and could fully use, while Naruto might've also had a kekkei genkai, he had no jutsu he knew to use the kekkai genkai. He was still stuck pouring chakra into a wound and hoping it would heal.

The fake hunter nin now was completely dominating the fight. Sasuke had no chance anymore, it was almost over. Resigning himself, Naruto made himself relax a bit so that he wouldn't panic. Sasuke would be fine, but he needed Haku to more exhausted to actually stand a chance against Haku.

Sasuke narrowed his eyes as he saw that Naruto was there and just watching him get defeated. But then, he had never quite trusted his teammate, and his teammate had never quite trusted him.

Uzumaki Naruto wasn't the only one with secrets. Uchiha Sasuke had his own too.

* * *

"Sharingan." He said, loud enough for the fake hunter nin and his teammate to notice. And Sasuke smirked the trademark Uchiha smirk at their shock.

_Wait, Sasuke had the Sharingan?_ Naruto stared at his teammate, who he had previously thought as a stuck up Uchiha who hasn't activated his kekkai genkai yet. Well Naruto couldn't _always_ be right, but he preferred to have a pretty good idea of someone's abilities. And Sasuke having a Sharingan killed his previous evaluation of Sasuke's skills.

At least it was a good thing he hadn't jumped in to help Sasuke.

That would've been a disaster for him. A fight really wasn't something he could go through without revealing something about him. Naruto's arsenal of jutsu was limited to what his fingers just sort of automatically did on their own. Basically jutsu he probably used a lot before he went into the coma.

After Sasuke revealed his Sharingan, Haku no longer was completely dominating the fight. Sasuke was now almost evenly matched against Haku with his Sharingan spinning and copying most of the Suiton jutsu Haku used.

"You're gifted for a genin, why aren't you chunin already Uchiha-san?" Haku remarked.

The Uchiha smirk bloomed on Sasuke's face as he said, "Why do you think I'm not?"

Now Naruto wanted to smash his head against a wall or some other solid surface. He had underestimated Sasuke and now had to rethink everything he had _thought _he knew about Sasuke. What his black haired teammate had said implicated that Sasuke and Kakashi were in on something about him, they didn't just put a chunin on a genin team and lie that the chunin was a genin for no reason.

If someone had a way to measure paranoia, then the already high levels of paranoia Naruto had just became higher. _Stay calm, relax, don't show any signs of panic_, He told himself. How much did they know? Did they have much more secret motives, did he do something to warrant such investigating? Naruto forced himself to concentrate on Sasuke's and Haku's fight.

Sasuke was getting tired, and Naruto knew that unless Haku had chakra reserves as big as his were, Haku was going to be out of chakra soon. He could here Sasuke's breathes grow heavier, and Haku getting slower and slower. Neither of the two were suited for this kind of battle, they were probably used to killing as quickly and efficiently as possible without too many problems.

Naruto really didn't want to risk Sasuke dying, because it would raise questions because Sasuke _was_ an Uchiha. They would ask why Naruto didn't help. Then it would slowly become worse and worse for Naruto.

A gasp of pain came from underneath the mask as Haku looked down at where his arm was. Sasuke had managed to slice a deep bloody cut from wrist to shoulder. A waterfall of blood was streaming onto the bridge, and even with the wound, Haku continued on fighting. Naruto admired the fact Haku could keep on fighting, but Sasuke was slowly starting to win. Naruto mentally smirked, he didn't have to anything in front of Team 7 after all.

Then Haku caught sight of Naruto.

_Damn it, _Naruto thought to himself, _I should've realized that Haku's good, better than Sasuke without his Sharingan. _

The fake hunter-nin slipped into the ice mirrors again and immediately came out and throw senbon at Naruto. Naruto internally panicked as he knew that he had no way of dodging all of them at this range and resigned himself to his...

Wait!

What?

Sasuke was standing over him. Key word being was. If it wasn't just happening in front of him, Naruto would've joked that Sasuke looked like a human pin cushion. Except now wasn't the time for joking.

"Why?" Naruto breathed, eyes wide, self control forgotten.

"My body moved on its own."

And then Sasuke slumped down to the ground.

* * *

Ba-dump

Ba-dump

Ba-dump

Ba-dump

He could hear his own heart. The world was tinted red and black. He could the mysterious seal pounding on his skin. Thumping in tune with his heart. It was burning.

BURNING.

Naruto's breathing was turning ragged, but the only reason Haku hadn't finished Naruto off yet was because of the killing intent Naruto was radiating. It was denser than any killing intent Haku had ever encountered, and Kakashi and Zabuza soon noticed.

_Don't lose control, don't lose control, don't lose control. _Naruto thought to himself, _please don't lose control._

He breathed in deeply a few times to calm down, and the red started to fade from his eyes. "I will survive," He told himself, "I will survive."

And then Naruto did the most obvious and idiotic thing he could think of; he charged.

* * *

Haku had used most of his senbon on Sasuke, and was tired. However the fake missing nin still had his ice mirrors, and that gave him an advantage that Naruto didn't. The only option Naruto knew he had was to outlast Haku, and when Haku finally ran out of chakra, attack. The problem was that Haku knew this too, and decided to do something about it.

Naruto saw Haku's hand begin to form a hand seal and panicked. His chakra suddenly reached out and went into Haku's body, and then causing Haku's hands to fly apart, as if they were made of butterflies. However Naruto only saw that from the corner of his eyes. The seal. It felt like it was burning.

A sudden gasp of pain escaped from Naruto's lips.

The pain of the seal came back twice as deadly. He was on his knees, hand holding onto his seal, trying his best not to scream. Then he saw the blurred form of Haku, and Kakashi's arm inside Haku's chest.

Naruto watched on, eyes wide open.

That was, until Gatou appeared. Then he lost all semblance of control and submitted to the pain.

A demon covered in deadly black chakra massacred Gatou's little army that day.

Kakashi found Naruto on his side, writhing in pain on the bridge. Naruto was covered in blood, from the thugs he had killed.

"I-ta..." Naruto was gasping through his pain.

Kakashi listened closer now as he lifted Naruto up bridal style, keeping a firm grip so that Naruto wouldn't suddenly start hitting.

"Itaa..."

Kakashi narrowed his eyes but made no comment as he took the young shinobi back to Tazuna's house.

* * *

Oh Kami-sama, it hurt.

He was surrounded by glass, like in his mindscape. Except in here the glass cast dark shadows, and he could feel the wet blood on his skin.

He was covered in blood.

Parts of the glass were stuck in his stuck. The shards were stained from his bleeding cuts, and he could feel himself cough up blood.

"How do I get out of here?" He screamed desperately into the darkness.

There was no answer.

And Naruto suffered on. Until...

**I know what you're thinking; "Naruto has blue chakra and Kyuubi/Kurama obviously has red!"**

**Relax, calm down. AU remember. And besides, that wasn't Kurama's chakra.**

**So what was it?**

**See ya ^^**

**Deadline for Chapter 3: September 15**

6


	4. Chapter 3

normal text=words, actions, present time **bold=Kurama speaking or its the author's note** _Short sentences in italics=thoughts_ _Paragraphs in italics=flashbacks_ **Author's Note: Naruto doesn't have the scars that look sort of like whiskers. He just doesn't I guess...Blame the fact that in my mind, he doesn't look like that in this universe. I think I answered the question about Zabuza and what happened to him in this chapter. "Curious and curiouser" is from the movie, Alice in Wonderland. Not the animated one, but the one that was live action. Great, I forgot to mention this but THANK-YOU Akiko J. Suzuki. She agreed to be by beta (and she's really awesome for that reason).**

There was a light.

A small, fragile piece of light.

It was above him, just barely out of his reach, but Naruto had to try anyways. And so he reached up for that beautiful piece of light, gritting his teeth to withstand the pain. As he got close, he realized that in the centre of the light was a cherry blossom petal.

Curious and curiouser.

If Naruto wasn't experiencing that much pain, he would've carefully looked over the cherry blossom petal, examining it. But Naruto was desperate to escape the pain, and so he didn't. As the cherry blossom petal met his hand, his world shattered around him like a mirror.

* * *

_The girl was dying. He could literally feel the cells losing their life. Naruto was trying not to cry on the girl's body, instead his cheeks met the sleeves of his trench coat every few minute._ _He was using all the chakra he could, doing jutsu after jutsu trying to heal her._ "_Chi Hana no Jutsu." He literally screamed in desperation as he made the dragon seal for the jutsu._ _The bloody wound in the girl's stomach disappeared, and various other wounds did too. But she was still dying._ _He was crying. Shinobi didn't cry. There was even a rule about it._ _He cried anyways, he wasn't much of a shinobi._

* * *

Naruto was back in his mindscape. Who was he? What did that scene mean? Who was the girl that was dying? So many questions...And he didn't have any answers. Naruto remembered the jutsu he had used on the girl, the Chi Hana no Jutsu. Well, at least he learned something new. And with a prick of pain, Naruto departed from his mindscape and into reality.

* * *

It was surprisingly bright, and Naruto's eyes blinked rapidly at the light. Sunlight was streaming in from an open window, and Naruto could see the dust that floated in the light. It was surprisingly peaceful compared to his last memory of when he was conscious, this bright atmosphere was the total opposite of the black and red blur.

His surroundings were familiar, it took him a few minutes to realize it was the small guest bedroom he had shared with Sasuke. The futon he was laying on smelled like nothing; it simply was like smelling fresh air. Naruto's bag with his supplies was lying next to the futon, he rummaged inside to look for the spare clothes he brought with him for this trip. He changed into his normal outfit of a nondescript shirt and pants with his trench coat on top.

Looking at himself in the mirror, he realized something. Naruto's left hand brushed by his left cheek, touching the tear dropped shaped scar that wasn't there previously. The scar was silvery in colour, and hard to not notice. Great, there goes my chance at pretending nothing important happened, Naruto thought to himself. He rubbed his eyes and turned away from the mirror. Taking a breath to calm his heart, he closed the door behind him as he left the room.

* * *

It had been an awkward week. His teammates had seen him lose control during the bridge incident and he desperately tried to avoid questions about the black chakra. After enduring the presences of the rest of Team 7, he had asked about what happened to Zabuza. Haku, from what Naruto saw, couldn't be alive unless he miraculously knew how to survive a Raikiri to the heart.

Zabuza had managed to survive the whole thing. It wasn't too surprising, if you thought about it, Zabuza had survived for years as an A-ranked missing nin with hunter nins constantly chasing him and bounty hunters that would pursue with for that humongous bounty on his head. Zabuza left a few days after, even though he wasn't fully healed he insisted on leaving. Naruto wasn't sure why Kakashi had let the missing nin even stay, he had expected Kakashi to finish Zabuza off at the end when Zabuza was injured.

That was just another mystery, an unimportant one though. He had much bigger mysteries to solve than that.

Naruto found himself obsessively trying out the jutsu he remembered himself doing in that memory. His hands practiced doing the dragon hand seal, sometimes he unconsciously did it while waiting for something. The Chi Hana no Jutsu was familiar, oddly familiar really. He probably had used it a lot in the past.

Everyone was watching him now, observing him, he always had that feeling when he was with his teammates after what happened on the bridge. Kakashi and Sasuke watched him like watching a potential enemy; warily and cautiously, suspicious at his every move. Sakura observed him, she wasn't like Kakashi and Sasuke with the watching, it was more like seeing something she was slightly afraid of. Sakura had seen him and what he had done on the bridge, it was natural to be afraid of someone who had killed two hundred men. Still, no matter how logical it was to watch him, it was annoying. The 'Cheshire cat grin' with his eyes shaped like an upside down U, was appearing on his face more and more often. Team 7 had the unique ability to piss him off in ten minutes or less. Sort of like one of those instant ramen cup but instead of ready-to-eat-in-three-minutes, it was able-to-make-Naruto-do-the- 'Cheshire cat grin'-because-he's-annoyed-in-ten-minutes-or-less. He really should've packed the headache medicine.

Sometimes Naruto passed the free time he had by spending it at Haku's grave. It was a simple grave with a cross on top, nothing special.

_ Did he feel guilty?_ Naruto really didn't know. Somehow thinking about Haku gave him that déjà vu feeling, like he had failed again. He forced himself to spend time at the grave in hopes that a memory would resurface.

It didn't work. His memory stayed the same, he couldn't remember anymore of his past than the day he woke up from killing the thugs on the bridge. Even doing the tree climbing exercise had more results than trying to remember.

When the day finally came for them to leave, Naruto was the first one at the newly built bridge. As the members of Team 7 walked away, someone said, "What do we call the bridge?"

After a while, it was determined.

The bridge Team 7 walked away on what was now ironically called Bridge 7, in their honor, of course.

* * *

The blood dripped onto the blank, white paper. Naruto's nose was almost touching it, biting his lip in concentration. He was trying out something he had discovered he could do; controling blood.

First, Naruto had to channel his chakra into his blood and give himself a cut somewhere on his body (usually his hand) to let the blood flow out. He wasn't sure if he could make the blood stay in the air so he controlled it on paper. After a while, he got bored and started to draw using the blood as ink, and it was going well.

His stomach growled a minute later, and Naruto abandoned his half finished picture in favor of making some instant ramen. The cherry blossoms he were painting would be finished later.

* * *

Kakashi was late. As usual.

Sasuke, Naruto and Sakura were used to it, Kakashi being late was just another typical day in the life of Team 7. When their sensei finally appeared, they would begin training. Maybe a bit of sparring, and usually working on chakra control for Sasuke and Naruto. Sakura trained on her taijutsu instead, and Kakashi would make them go on D ranks after a while, so that they could work on their teamwork.

In terms of strength, when Sakura got mad she could hit harder than Sasuke or Naruto. However Sasuke was the fastest out of the three, and Naruto had more agility and stamina than them both. Naruto could see why Team 7 hypothetically would work, but real life was different than on paper, and Team 7's problem was that their personalities clashed.

Sakura, although not as big a fan girl than others, had a crush on Sasuke. It got slightly better after a while, but it was still there. Sasuke was antisocial and barely tolerated his teammates, thinking he was better than the genin since he was a chunin. And Naruto...pretended to be happy-go-lucky but when he got annoyed "accidents" tended to happen like "accidentally" releasing Tora after catching her because Tora scratched Naruto's face. Add in a few more factors and you got the chaotic mess that was Team 7.

This day was no different from the rest, and at 5:30 the team finished their D-ranks and went home. Naruto decided to let his feet take where he wanted to go and when he finally stopped he expected to find himself in front of a normal, unamazing door that led to his apartment. Instead he found himself in front of a ramen stand called Ichiraku Ramen. _Had he come here before?_ Naruto thought to himself because it seemed familiar, just like his apartment seemed familiar. He nervously took a seat on one of the chairs, and looked at the menu.

"Naruto you came back!" He looked up from the menu in confusion and stared at the brown haired waitress who was now hugging him from over the counter. _Who is she?_ He asked himself, as he was nearly hugged to death by the squealing waitress and the cook behind the counter was watching the scene in front of him with a smile. Naruto gently pried the waitress away from him as she babbled questions like; "Where have you been? Why didn't you visit?" and said stupid things like; "Oh you used to be sooo cute! You still are though, just not as cute as you used to be!" This annoyed Naruto because he was male, thank you, and guys weren't cute. They could be handsome, charming and etcetera but guys were NOT cute.

"Do I know you?" He asked the waitress. _Maybe she'll give me some clue to my past_, he thought to himself.

"Huh?" the waitress looked at Naruto curiously, "You don't remember me? It's only been three years Naruto, I'm Ayame and you've," she poked his stomach as she said," you've been coming to this stand since you were shorter than the chair you're sitting on!" He blinked at her explanation. _Had he visited this ramen stand before in his past?_ It did seem familiar and Ayame looked like she was telling the truth. The waitress probably noticed how confused he looked and Naruto could hear the tone of concern in her voice as she asked, "You remember right?"

"I'm sorry," those words left Naruto's lips easily, apologizing was something he was used to, "but I was in a coma for two years and when I finally woke up a year ago I didn't remember anything from before." Ayame and the cook accepted it; Ichiraku's had attracted more than civilians and these things did happen to ninja. It wasn't the weirdest thing they had heard.

"Well Naruto, you obviously need to eat something, since you look like you're only eleven!" The chef said. Naruto scowled in annoyance, being told he looked younger than he looked was another pet peeve of his. "Well it's true Naruto, you look like you're eleven even though you're sixteen." Ayame commented smiling. "Uh...It's sort of like this..." Naruto began, and he ended up explaining that he hadn't aged during his coma and he actually was only thirteen. Ayame and the cook listened the whole time, until Naruto's stomach began to rebel against him. Ayame smiled kindly down at him as he ordered and began to pull out his wallet to pay, "Naruto, you can put your wallet down. This one's on the house." Naruto tiredly smiled and waited for his ramen. Around twenty minutes later he left the stall with a full stomach and a smile on his face. A real smile.

The smile didn't even disappear when he finally went to sleep.

* * *

The picture of raining cherry blossoms was almost finished.

Well, to put it more accurately, three quarters of it was finished. Using the blood required control because if he applied too much chakra, there would be too much blood than he needed. Too much blood would make him use thicker lines than he needed, which would ruin the cherry blossoms because the cherry blossoms had to look delicate and fragile and thick lines would ruin the whole effect.

Naruto didn't suffer with having to use blood as a medium since the blood loss seemed to have no affect on him. His theory was that he probably would have to lose a lot more blood than the average human to suffer from blood loss because of his kekkei genkai.

It took patience and time, but Naruto had those, to 'paint' it. Well, at least now he had a new hobby apart from gardening.

* * *

It happened again. He was alone in the dark. Except this time, although it hurt, he could move a bit since the chains had slightly loosened. Naruto gritted his teeth as he forced himself into a crouching position, but just because he could move didn't mean that there wasn't any pain. Out of the corner of his eyes, he saw something. It was glowing softly like the first light. He didn't hesitate in jumping to reach it. The chains were wrapped uncomfortably tight around his body but Naruto ignored it. Even though the chains were strangling him, reaching around his neck, he had to get to that light. Slowly, too slow in some ways, his fingertips managed to brush the light. The world shattered again, and Naruto was transported to another memory.

* * *

_Naruto looked at the body. _

_The blood on the corpse's neck indicated that whoever killed him had killed him quickly and efficiently, a trained killer. The person probably wasn't aware of the killer's presence and had had gone down quick._ _Solving mysteries like these were what the Uchiha usually did since they were the police force, but since there was a war going on, these were classified as C-rank missions. _

_Most of the genin squads were lead by a chunin because the jonin were needed elsewhere. The small amount of D-ranks were done by academy students because even genin were needed somewhere._ _Naruto was good at this kind of thing. Autopsies, emergency medical care, all that. It was hard to explain but his kekkei genkai gave him an advantage the other medic nin did not. Using his kekkei genkai was like using water style jutsu: like water style he needed a source (like a lake or, in his case a body) to use the jutsu. While medical ninjutsu was channeling chakra into the body, he could control the cells. He didn't need perfect, precise chakra control to use his jutsus, and his jutsus used less chakra than the normal medical ninjutsu. It was hard to explain the difference, and he wasn't too sure how to tell it to others._

_Naruto looked back down and resumed checking the corpse. The autopsy was entirely unnecessary with his kekkei genkai but the higher ups insisted. Well, if they wanted to waste their time and money, who was he to complain?_

* * *

Kami, he was back in the darkness. Why hadn't he woken up?

He had woken up last time, but he guessed this time was different. The chains were still wrapped around him, and he still could feel the pain. But something was different.

What was it? What was the difference? He wanted to scream out into the darkness, but he didn't. It would have been so easy to scream that, especially since he was already in pain.

"_Mind over matter"_, a gentle female voice scolded him, "_how else would you want to be a shinobi?"_

Eyes widened as he tried to remember, to know, who it was. The voice, like many things, was familiar. Damn it! Why couldn't he remember, why couldn't he just have a nice, normal life?

"_Calm down, Naru-chan"_, the voice chided, don't get mad. "_You'll get it soon."_

He wanted to cry, to beg for answers, to scream with frustration. There were a lot of things he wanted to do. Naruto didn't have much of a choice this time, it was already decided for him. So the world fell to pieces around him again.

* * *

_Flowers. He was at the flowers shop again, searching for flowers. Naruto went to this shop frequently these days, spending more and more time searching for flowers. These flowers weren't going to weddings or anniversaries or celebrations, unless you counted celebrating one's life and how they died a celebration._

_It was simple, these flowers were going to graves and tombs and the stone where those who were killed in combat got their names carved. A side effect of the war was that the flower shop's business was quite steady. After all, everyone knew at least someone who had died._ _The funeral business was also going steady, from all the graves they had to dig and all that. _

_Sometimes there wasn't even a body to cry over, but fake graves with tombstones to mourn over happened to be there for placing flowers on. He glanced at his watch, Naruto was almost late. _Great, she's going to kill me_, he thought to himself as he..._

* * *

It was 6:30 in the morning when he woke up.

The sun had begun to come out into the sky, but not quite yet. He groaned and got out of bed, stretching and yawning the way to his bathroom. Naruto's hair was sticking up in different directions, which was what his hair always did when he woke up. Dragging a comb through the mess, he put his toothbrush down as he finished brushing his teeth, and put the kettle on the stove to heat some water up for a cup of tea.

Tea was something he drank with honey or sugar drizzled into, coffee tended to make him too aware of his surroundings. Giving Naruto coffee was an offence that was punished by making the offender do D-ranks for no pay for a long, long time. Suffice to say, no one gave Naruto coffee.

After inhaling down his hot breakfast as fast as he could, he had time to kill. After a while, he found himself throwing his kunai and catching it while sitting on his couch. It wasn't exactly the most interesting thing to do, and Naruto found his mind wandering as he threw the kunai. Suddenly he felt the kunai lightly slice the flesh of his hand as he came out of a daydream about killing Tora, the cat.

"Shit!" He swore as he pushed the couch forwards so he could retrieve the kunai that was stuck behind the couch. As he pushed his hand underneath the couch to retrieve the kunai, the top of his hand brushed by something that was obviously not the fabric of his couch. It felt wooden and he slipped his other hand to help the one already down there to get the thing out of his couch.

When he finally got the thing out (and forgot about his kunai in the process), he looked closely at it. It was a box, made out of a medium brown wood and had no obvious clasp or lock he could pick to open it. He frowned as he felt over the surface of the box to find one so he could open it, but the wooden box was effectively no more than a cube made out of wood. Naruto rapped his knuckles against one of the sides, interesting, he thought to himself because the box, even though it appeared to be just a block of wood, was hollow inside. Naruto briefly looked up and saw the time. "Great" He groaned as he grabbed some of his kunai and ran out the door, trying to get the the training grounds on time so he wouldn't be late.

* * *

Even when Naruto thought he outsmarted Kakashi by arriving two hours late, life decided to bite him back. Sakura and Sasuke did their usual routine of noticing him and then going back to whatever they were doing, while there was still no sign of Kakashi.

When Kakashi finally appeared, half an hour had gone by after Naruto arrived, and had to deal with a furious Sakura with steam coming out of her ears, a brooding Sasuke and a Naruto that seemed to be smiling while his fingers were shaking like they wanted to strangle a certain someone. Kakashi managed to survive the various kunai, exploding tags, punches and ear breaking screams, and managed everyone to calm down.

The two genin (and the lone chunin) all looked at Kakashi in amazement at the fact that he was still calmly reading his porn. If it was anyone but their perverted squad leader, they would've been openly amazed with star struck expressions but instead they just sweat dropped. "

This is sudden, but I've nominated you guys for the chunin exams." Kakashi said with his usual lazy, apathetic expression.

"What did you say?"

"Thanks!"

"Hn..."

Naruto almost missed the questioning glance Sasuke gave Kakashi, but he connected the slight confused tone in the "Hn..." and the glance together. _Sasuke was already a chunin, so why was Kakashi entering him in the chunin exams? _Naruto thought to himself, _so did the Hokage demote him or something? And why go through all that trouble? _Naruto absent mindedly took one of the paper applications while he was thinking.

"Though this is just a nomination. Whether to take the exam is up to each of you. Those who wish to take it should sign those papers and turn them in at Room 301 by 4:00PM tomorrow. That's all." Kakashi finished and disappeared using shunshin.

"You mean we waited two and a half hours just to be..." Naruto murmured as he stared at the spot where Kakashi had been. Then he joined his teammates who were walking back.

"So, the chunin exams? It sounds awesome!" He fake smiled and waited for a reply from Sakura. Naruto didn't get anything but Sasuke's usual uncaring silence. Looking over to his right, Naruto saw that Sakura had a quiet, contemplating expression on her face like she was thinking over something that she regretted or would regret. I_t's not my mess, I'll deal with it if it's important tomorrow,_ Naruto thought, and with that he and Sasuke walked on, leaving Sakura to herself.

* * *

Kurama was bored.

Ignoring Naruto had gotten rid of one of his only sources of entertainment.

He was stuck just watching what happens to his paranoid, lying jailor. He hoped his host would figure it out quick so that he could finally talk to someone soon. Lying around in a cell for years and having no one to talk to was unappealing, especially if that cell was in some kind of twisted, demented world of mirrors. Naruto should've never taken that cursed mission years ago that involved that annoying genjutsu with mirrors in it, then Kurama wouldn't have to deal with such an annoying mindscape.

Kurama sighed, and buried his head into his forelegs, resigning himself to waiting for the gaki to finally realise something so that he wouldn't have to be bored.

**Due date for Chapter 4: September 30th**

**Feel free to point out errors and etc.**


	5. Chapter 4

**Akado has a line above the o, but I don't know how to do that. Just a warning, anything, like lines and signs** **above a letter for pronunciation, I probably will not do due to lack of any knowledge of how to.**

**I missed my deadline. I'm sorry. *sweatdrops* I'll try to write faster and improve my writing.**

**Thanks to Akiko J. Suzuki who beta-ed this for me ^^. Her stories are great! even though they're not my cup of tea (i.e. Sakura-centric)**

Wake up, brush teeth, inhale breakfast, go out the door; just another normal morning.

Except for the slip of paper burning a hole in his pocket.

Naruto was just another face in the crowd of people as he walked towards to the building where room 301 was, palms slightly sweaty. Out of the corner of his eyes, he saw a blur of bright pink and black and realized that his teammates were already here, and were waiting for him.

"Hey! How long have you guys been here?" He asked, face already in the friendly but harmless smile he had mastered. Sakura forced an obviously faked smile, while Sasuke stuck to the usual monosyllabic reply. Even though Sakura seemed to have second thoughts about the exams, apparently her crush on Sasuke made her determined to go through it because Sasuke wanted to.

Team 7 entered the building, and walked up two flights of stairs to see a genin team that looked around their age being beaten up by two other genin.  
"Pah, you intend to enter the chunin exams like that? You should just quit now. You're just a little kid." Sneered the genin with what looked like two giant kunai strapped to his back, as he looked down at the bushy, caterpillar-like eyebrows.

"Please let us through..." The teammate in a pink shirt begged. Bruises littered the team's faces, somehow seeming slightly...blurry?

Genjutsu, the voice whispered in his head, the blur is something a beginner would have if they didn't project their genjutsu well enough. That's why keeping a steady chakra flow is essential, that's why-

Naruto scowled, but no one noticed as all eyes were on the team in front of them. The voice wasn't feminine like the previous one was; it was more masculine and had a slightly hoarse tone to it. He had heard that hearing voices in your head was a sign of insanity, but he wasn't insane, was he?

"Psst...Naruto, this isn't the right floor. We have to go up another staircase to get to 301. There's a genjutsu covering the door." Sakura whispered into Naruto's ear, trying not to make what she was doing obvious to everyone else. "Try to find a way to get through the doors without attracting attention."

Naruto nodded his head, and moved as close to the edge of the crowd as fast he could without anyone noticing. Hurrying through the handseals for the handy Kakuremino no Jutsu, he walked slowly against the walls of the room, being as silent as he could and avoiding any contact between him and others so that he could remain undetected. He concentrated on his task, and didn't dare look around to see if his teammates were having as much success as he was, because he didn't want to suddenly stumble or trip and reveal himself to the world. Slowly, he made it to the door, and just as he stumbled past it, Naruto felt himself brush one of the two genin that were guarding it.

He caught his breath, his heart thumping.

The genin pretended nothing had happened, and Naruto went on his way. When he was almost out of sight, the genin winked at him.

* * *

Sasuke and Sakura were already there, waiting for him to appear. They usually waited for him, and this time it was no different. And Team 7 was one step closer towards the chunin exams.

* * *

A written exam. A freaking _written exam_! Why, oh why, did Kami-sama hate him so much? When Naruto was in the Academy, written exams were his worst subject. His knowledge of history and the forming of the hidden villages was basic, and he calculated where the kunai was going to go by instinct and experience. Scores in the 80% range were what he usually went for back during the Academy, now what would he do now?

_Just pretend it's just another test, a simple written test, _he told himself, but lying to everyone else and lying to yourself are two different things. How calm did he look to the outside world? Naruto had to force himself to breathe deep breaths, no shallow breathing, no beads of sweat, no wide, open eyes. Just a calm, serene face of someone in deep thought.

Would he cheat? Should he cheat?

Could he cheat and get away with it?

What if he got caught while cheating?

So many questions. The girl sitting beside him, Hinata, he briefly remembered from the Academy, already had a fifth of her questions done. She was glancing nervously around her at her surroundings, but never settling her gaze long enough for the proctors of the exam to say she was cheating. Naruto could tell by the veins appearing around her eyes that she was using her Byakugan to look at everyone else's papers and write down their answers. So far she had gotten lucky and didn't have a single wrong one.

If the girl sitting beside him was cheating, then how many other people were too?

Doing a quick once-over of the room, he saw another set of eyes using Byakugan, something that looked like an eye made out of...sand? And Sasuke using his Sharingan on the person in front of him.

So the idea was to cheat? Everyone one else seemed to be doing it. Briefly now the old, annoying quote adults liked to use flashed through his mind; "If all your friends jumped off a cliff, would you jump off too?"

_It doesn't matter_, Naruto told himself, _there's no way I'll pass this exam if I don't cheat._

And that's how Naruto found himself, half an hour later, with a kunai on his desk as a warning for cheating. Well, at least Naruto had already answered all of the questions so the marks deducted didn't hurt too much.

* * *

"Wake up Naruto!" Someone screeched into his ear, "You better wake up right now or else I'll kill you for making us miss the second part of the exams!"

The person decided to punch him on the head. Hard. The punch told him that it was Sakura who had hit him, because the stars flying around him made the world seem blurry and like it was spinning around him. _Sakura certainly can hit hard, _he mused to himself as he got up and staggered out of the room.

Clutching his head, he followed the stream of people, not really aware of where he was going. Naruto only stopped walking when he bumped into the person in front of him, and ignoring the snarled response of said person, looked around at his surroundings. He was just on the borderline of a forest, a chain link fence the only defense he would get if something (or someone) decided to try to attack the genin. The proctor was already yelling and explaining the whole second portion, about how they would have to get one heaven and earth scroll to pass.

_Hurry up already_, he impatiently thought as he waited for his team's turn. When the proctor, Anko, finally had them sign the forms so that she wouldn't be responsible for their deaths, he hesitated before grabbing the pen and signing. Naruto wasn't sure about what was in this "Forest of Death" or Training Grounds 44 as it was called, but he got the general idea from its name.

_It would be a shame to die now, _he mused while signing the sheets of paper, _after all, I've just barely scratched the surface of my forgotten past._

Finishing the last form, he went with his teammates as they collected their heaven scroll. Trusting Sasuke to be the one with it, (after all Sasuke _did_ like being in charge). Except he noticed the quick flash of Sasuke's hand giving the scroll to Sakura.

"Why?" Naruto asked as they were getting ready to go in.

"They'll probably expect me or you to be the ones with it since we look more likely to last longer than her. From an outsider's point of view, Sakura looks like our genjutsu specialist who seems to be weak at taijutsu. We both know that that isn't true, but the rest of the teams don't." The blunt reply from Sasuke was one of the longest things Sakura and Naruto had ever heard him say. And it might have been the last.

Sakura had a small glint of pride in her eyes after she listened to Sasuke's explanation, and Naruto didn't feel like squashing that glint yet. Wait? Was he starting to..._like_ Team 7? He wasn't sure, and those feelings aren't important right now. Surviving was.

And with that, Team 7 ran off into the Forest of Death.

* * *

"Those were human screams, right?" Sakura asked nervously as they stopped to survey their surroundings.

"Yeah, should be." Naruto replied_, _making sure his voice wasn't too cold or callous sounding to her.

Sasuke didn't bother commenting, as he activated his Sharingan and looked for unfamiliar chakra signatures. Sakura was already getting nervous, Naruto could tell by her body language, arms slightly folded with the hands going up her biceps and back down, knees having a slight shake to them. Her eyes were scanning around her, and they were opened wider than usual.

If Sakura was on an edge, it meant that Naruto had a pretty good reason to be on an edge too. That let him loosen his mask a little so that his teammates wouldn't suspect that he wasn't what he seemed. A normal genin would show slight fear in this situation, and Naruto (although not a normal genin) knew that he needed to show fear too.

He frowned he felt the sensation of needing to go and take a washroom break. "Guys, I need to go water some plants." Naruto softly called out to his teammates as he walked a short distance away to a bush that was tall and wide enough to conceal what he was going to do.

Walking away from the bush he just watered, he dodged a kunai that was aimed for his head. Naruto squinted at the mysterious genin that had chosen to attack his team. He could feel the blood pounding in his head, as he threw a few of his kunai at the genin's vitals. The genin managed to dodge all but one, and that one just flew into his right knee. Sasuke used the kunai Naruto had thrown as an advantage, and with one chakra assisted throw had almost finished the opponent.

Almost.

Their opponent managed to disappear too fast for Sasuke to kill him, and Team 7 all looked at the place where the genin used to be. Just before they were going to continue on, Sasuke stopped them.

"We need a code word for if we get separated again. The first person will ask, "What's Kakashi-sensei's favourite book." And the answer will be, "The best, most amazing, perverted book in the whole world." If the answer is wrong, assume the person is an enemy and attack."

Naruto double-took and made a face. Then he voiced his complaints, "Why the hell do we have to say _that_? That's so-Gah! That's so damn _perverted! _Why can't we have something else, like, like..."

Sasuke looked down his nose at Naruto and deadpanned, "Unless you have something better, this is what we're saying."

Naruto thought about it for a minute, and sighed in defeat. Then as he was getting up from his crouching position to follow Sasuke, he jumped back just before a powerful wind came blowing his way.

* * *

Naruto looked up, and saw a tuft of black hair that looked suspiciously like a duck's butt. Connecting the two together, he guessed that it was Sasuke. He sneaked around the trees to avoid suspicion as he approached his teammate with a kunai in his hand just in case it was an enemy. Moving his foot a little to avoid a twig on the ground, he tapped Sasuke's shoulder.

"What's Kakashi-sensei's favourite book?" Naruto asked, as he examined Sasuke.

"The best, most amazing, perverted book in the whole world." The answer came in a perfect, emotionless monotone.

Naruto looked over his shoulder at the sound of a broken twig. Sakura ran towards them, but Sasuke told her to stay away.

"What's Kakashi-sensei's favourite book?" Sasuke asked Sakura, keeping a close eye on her.

"The best, most amazing, perverted book in the whole world." Sakura replied.

Sasuke nodded and then, he whipped out a kunai and threw it at her. Sakura dodged and disappeared in a puff of smoke, revealing a genin wearing a cone like hat that covered most of his/her face.

"You're not Sakura. Sakura would've blushed or have a look of disgust on her face while saying it, and she would've hesitated a bit in some parts. So, who are you?" Sasuke accused, while Naruto kept a few weapons on hand, just in case.

Naruto looked around the clearing, keeping an eye out for any of the genin's teammates while Sasuke and the enemy genin talked. His eyes kept flicking around, never settling on a target to observe.

Naruto blinked as he thought he saw a kunai spinning towards him, and he felt his own blood on his face. _Wait what?!_

Pressing his hand into the proper hand seal, he focused on trying to break the genjutsu. Luckily, it worked and the world was back to normal again.

_The mysterious genin hadn't done any hand seals_, Naruto thought to himself, _so that means he used his killer intent itself and his eyes to do that. Who exactly is this genin-no, no genin should be this powerful. Me and Sasuke don't even stand a chance. I'll try finding Sakura, and hoping Sasuke will hold him off for awhile._  
Naruto looked at Sasuke, and mouthed the words; "Going to find Sakura."

Sasuke nodded back at Naruto, and face the enemy.

Naruto ran as fast as he could, away from the fighting and focused on trying to detect a trace of human-like blood. It was sort of like a chakra exercise on gathering water for a water jutsu, except he was looking for a thirteen year old girl's amount of blood. Feeling the tug of a source he followed it, and found...

A giant snake.

Naruto blinked as he watched from the bushes where he saw a giant snake instead of where he guessed Sakura to be. He concentrated again, to check if he'd made a mistake.

Nope. Sakura should've been there.

Looking at the snake, Naruto guessed what the size of the mouth would've been, and then guessed how wide the mouth open with the jaw dislocated would've been. The snake's jaws were more than wide enough to swallow a thirteen year old girl.  
So how would he rescue Sakura?

He knew the three basic jutsu taught at the Academy, but they wouldn't do him much good right now. Naruto did have kunai and shuriken on him, but his taijutsu wouldn't help him if the snake swallowed him whole. He frowned and tried thinking up a strategy, aware of the seconds ticking away.

Boom!

Pieces of snake flew at Naruto, and over his head. His eyes wide, he peered out of the bush as he saw a familiar pink headed female that was part of his team.

"Sakura!" He breathed, then rushed over to her, checking her injuries. Naruto guessed that she had used some of her exploding tags that she favoured to escape, but the exploding tags had scorched and burned her.

He sucked in a breath, should he heal her with the jutsu he knew or leave her as she was and give her no clues? Briefly, something about his teammates dying and his team being unable to continue flashed through his mind, and he decided.

"Chi Hana no Jutsu." He murmured and watched in horror as a wound he didn't even know he had, dripped blood over some of her burns. Naruto didn't want to know if the blood would affect the healing, because he wasn't sure. Then he noticed that where the blood had fallen, it had become shaped like a flower.

"I guess that's why it's called blood flower." He muttered, while watching Sakura's skin turn from mottled red to its usual peach. Running his hand through his pockets and his weapon pouch, Naruto desperately looked for something to wake Sakura back up. Finding nothing that wouldn't cause her temporary or permanent damage (since he had used all that chakra on her, and it would be a waste if he used a kunai on her and had to heal her all over again).

Seeing no other way, Naruto slapped her. Hard.

Although Naruto _had_ wanted to slap her many times while they were training, so he could've just said he was indulging in one of his fantasies.

After a few more slaps (that Naruto may, or may not have enjoyed), Sakura returned to the world of the conscious and living.

She made a few sounds that sounded like a cross between a grunt and a groan (a groant?) and shakily got up on her knees. "Naruto?"

"Yeah?" Naruto wasn't really looking at her or paying attention, he was impatient and jumpy with nerves. Did he do the right thing by leaving Sasuke? Even though he was sure Sasuke was watching him for his superiors, he didn't want his blood on his hands.

"The snake? It..." Her voice seemed a bit higher than usual, or was it just him?

"I saw the snake explode. It's dead."

"Sasuke?"

"I'm not sure; I left him to find you. He's currently fighting a guy...Are you okay?" Naruto hoped that Sakura wouldn't ask any more questions, he really didn't want to answer questions right now. Naruto just wasn't in the mood, and he could feel his facial muscles only managing a faint smile.  
Sakura nodded a moment later, and he ran off in the direction he had last seen Sasuke, with Sakura trailing after him.

* * *

Naruto didn't know what he had expected. He wasn't sure if he had expected for Sasuke to manage to fend off the enemy, or to lose.  
What he certainly didn't expect was for Sasuke to give up their scroll.

"What the hell Sasuke?" He yelled, and strode over and punched him in the gut. Naruto didn't want to see and acknowledge Sasuke and Sakura's expressions.  
"What was that for Naruto?" Sasuke shouted back, standing up. Naruto could see Sasuke wince a bit from the sudden punch, but that didn't bother him.  
"Naruto...Why?" Sakura's voice was fainter, and more controlled, and both he and Sasuke ignored it.

"Why give him the scroll? WHY?" He yelled, anger making him uncaring of how loud he was.

His teammates hesitated in answering; they had never seen this side of Naruto before. Usually he was happy, and smiled no matter what. The exam had brought out a side to him they had never seen before, and that they didn't really want to see.

"Naruto, because...Maybe he'll leave us alone..." Sakura stammered out, sweat beading down her temple.

"So? He could just kill us after, there's no guarantee he'll just go and leave. Can't you see, he could just kill us after, he's that powerful!" Naruto shouted, angry at his teammate's terrible reasoning and sick of having to tolerate them. All the pent up, unreleased anger had built up under the ice cold grip he held his emotions in, and when the pressure became too much, his control over his emotions faded.

"Ku fu fu fu fu fu... You're absolutely right, Naruto-kun."

Three heads whipped around to stare at the smiling guy.

And then Naruto felt the edges of a headache. A big one.

At the worst, possible moment for him to have one.

"Orochimaru, get away from them." He dimly heard Sasuke snarl that aloud in the background, but he was more focused on ignoring the pain.  
Screams, probably from Sakura, and laughing.

He thought he saw a giant snake, but it might have been just him.

The headache bloomed into the mother of all headaches as he crouched on the ground, in a great example of the armadillo move.

When the darkness finally took over his eyes, he was already wishing that he was unconscious.

* * *

"_Help! Heeeelp! Please, someone help me!" He shouted as she dragged him down the road, a storm of dust following the duo because of how Naruto's sandals dug into the ground, trying to prevent his teammate from taking him to _that_._

_No one came and helped him. There were stares, and whispers, but nobody even came towards him. A few snickers came from two civilian boys his age, pointing with grins on their faces._

_It wasn't just those two boys, off duty chunin also were snickering at him. His cheeks burned as he looked down, embarrassed._

_A quick hit to the head made him shut up. _

_"But why do _I_ have to do it? You're a girl!" He whined to her, puppy dog eyes already trained on her face. _

_"Because, Naruto."_

_"Because isn't an answer!"_

_"It is."_

_"No it isn't."_

_She didn't answer after that, instead she just concentrated on dragging the struggling blonde down the street and into a shop._  
_Naruto desperately grabbed a pole and clung to it, like he feared for his life if he let go._

_She rolled her eyes in annoyance, and grumbled. Then she kicked Naruto in the inside of his knees, and while Naruto let go of the pole momentarily at the pain, she lifted him and carried him, bridal style, into the shop._

_There, she dropped him on the ground._

_As he got up and patted the dust off of him, the shopkeeper came over and looked at Naruto, like he was measuring the blonde for clothes._

_Which was what the shopkeeper was doing._

_Naruto glanced around the shop and his eyes widened._

_It was a shop. A shop with female clothing. _

_He face turned a shade of bubble gum pink when he saw the more, intimate, types of clothing. _

_His worst nightmare had arrived. And now he was stuck in it. _

_"NOOO!" He screamed as his teammate and the shopkeeper struggled to put him into a girl's kimono. All the while, he could have sworn he heard several familiar snickers._

_Payback, yes, payback, would hurt. _

* * *

He came to consciousness to the sound of arms being broken. A sharp crack accompanied by another and then screams.  
Someone was shouting for Sasuke to stop. It sounded like Sakura.

Wait...yeah. The voice was Sakura's.

Did that mean Sasuke was the one who was breaking the arms?

Naruto groaned as he forced himself up from the ground, and shook his head to get all the grass and dirt out of his hair. He rubbed his eyes a few times, and patted the dirt out of his clothes. Various parts of his clothing were frayed, and he guessed that his clothes probably got damaged in the fight with...the person called Orochimaru.

Naruto looked at the scene in front of him as he slowly dragged a kunai out of his weapons pouch.

In a way, it was like a class reunion (except it didn't apply to Team Gai).

Naruto felt his body tense up, after all, the other teams were their enemies.

Except then Sakura chose to rush over and look at him and do a check up on him as if _she _was a _medic_!

Wait? Why did he get all annoyed at her for that? He wasn't even a medic in the first place.

Was he?

Naruto didn't think he was.

As Sakura finished her checkup, Naruto tried to not let the pang of annoyance he felt towards the pink haired girl for making him unable to eavesdrop on Sasuke's conversation with the other teams. He felt drowsy, probably because he had just woken up.

Sasuke nodded and the teams slowly turned and left, just as Sakura finished her impromptu check up. Did they plan it that way? His paranoia came and alerted him to the possibility that Sasuke and Sakura were in cahoots and made sure Naruto couldn't have even a chance to know what Sasuke was up to, and they were planning something that might or might not involve the other teams.

No, that was impossible. He was just being paranoid.

Just his paranoia.

Nothing amazing or suspicious at all. Or at least that was what he was trying to tell himself.

So, as he set out with his team towards the tower, he didn't look back.

* * *

Panting, hunched over the team from Ame, Naruto closed his eyes at the feeling of the beginning of a headache. His team didn't know about the headaches, his instincts warned him from doing that.

Silly, when had he relied on instinct? Logic was...a better alternative.

Although nothing about his situation was logical. And his actions themselves were all very illogical too.

What a mess he had gotten himself into.

As Sasuke scavenged the Ame team's scroll from the defeated members, he and Sakura turned and left, Sasuke catching up quickly.

They were almost there. They were almost at the tower.

* * *

Team 7 reached the tower just in time.

As footsteps echoed in the halls, the collar of Sasuke's shirt slipped momentarily and Naruto caught sight of an unusual design on his teammate's neck. His gaze may have lingered a bit too long to be normal, but Sasuke didn't notice.

There were so many questions in Naruto's head about the design.

They could wait though; the exams were his first priority now.

* * *

Preliminaries. They had to go through preliminaries. After the whole part two of the exams, they had to go through the fucking _preliminaries_ first before even being considered for chunin.

Sometimes Naruto wished he had actually had more time to think through his persona for others, this nice guy act was annoying. Because to remain in character, he couldn't swear. Or yell. Or punch the lights of someone.

All things he wished he could.

Sakura briefly voiced a question, but Sasuke quickly shot a glare to silence her. As she stammered out her excuse, Naruto closed his eyes, pondering upon why and what they knew that he didn't.

Sasuke was looking at him. He realized that when his instincts told him that someone was watching

.  
Cracking one eye open, he smiled, "So...are you nervous?" He asked, keeping his tone and body language subtle, making the hesitation before the "are you nervous" part obvious. Naruto needed to Sasuke to be convinced that he was just another genin.

He really wished he knew why Kakashi, Sasuke and others were watching him. It would be nice to know.

But he shoved all thoughts of that out of his head as he watched the screen in front of him, nervous and trying to devise a strategy.

The screen flickered, and images changed from one to another. Then it stopped.

Uchiha Sasuke versus Akado Yoroi.

Naruto sighed for a moment, relieved because it wasn't him. He wasn't exactly thrilled by the idea of possible death, even if the Procter would stop when he deemed it, some techniques killed instantly, leaving no chance for the Procter to stop it.

And some just killed anyways.

Sparing a look sideways at the team from Suna, he couldn't deny that he felt a shiver down his spine at the bloodlust they emitted.

It was the boy in the middle, who looked like he was the leader, that scared him the most. If he somehow had the bad luck to fight him, the boy would probably just kill him for the heck of it. Naruto knew that he probably would have to forfeit from the fight just so that he could live to see another day.

He forced his mind to watch Sasuke's match, but worry for his own turn made it hard to concentrate. As Sasuke was getting pummeled into the ground by his opponent, he just sat numbly and watched.

_Shouts and taunts filled the match. Sasuke's Sharingan came into play sometime during. Sasuke copying Lee's move._

All things he watched and heard in the background.

_Sasuke winning._

A lot of things in his life involved Sasuke, he realized. And Sakura. It wasn't surprising though. He guessed it was just what happened in a genin team.

_Wait...was that..._

The brief feeling disappeared before he could think about what it was. Naruto shook his head, and his eyes wandered back to the arena.

Three fights later, he was still waiting.

And waiting for his turn.

_Though it was a good thing_, he mused to himself, _because it gives me a better idea of my opponent. And more time to think about how to deal with them._

His palms were dry. Good.

Sweaty palms made holding a kunai or shuriken harder.

His heartbeat was normal. Breathing, calm and steady.

Naruto was good to go.

The redhead from Suna hadn't gone down yet, and Naruto prayed to Kami inside his mind, if Kami even existed, that he wouldn't have to face the boy. He liked being alive, thank-you.

The names flashed on the screen again, and Naruto sharply drew in a breath.

Uzumaki Naruto versus Yamanaka Ino

_Well, I guess it's my turn._

**I promise I'll try to meet my deadline this time. I swear.**

**Deadline: Expect it on or before December 24/25**

**Is it just me or is there a veil of Sakura bashing in my story? I'm sorry, but Naruto's opinion of Sakura right now isn't the highest. But sadly, I'm probably not going to have Naruto bother fixing that problem.**

**I just don't want to. She'll grow stronger on her own, just like in canon. That means she actually _matures_ in a way that has her doing it herself instead of relying on someone to point it out.**

**Sakura's was a... Okay, I hated her in Part 1. Her Shippuden self I liked. Capiche?**

**So, if you like Sakura...I'm really sorry.**

**Damn it, switching stuff from Google Docs, to Microsoft Word, to Wordpad to this messes up my formatting.**

**Jan 20, 2013: re-formatted it. *Sweat-drops*, it really was quite, wasn't it?**


End file.
